By Christian Riddell
Motorcoach Marketing Council

As a professional marketer, I spend the majority of my time working with companies to help manage their public image.

When we work together, we focus on crafting a persona for their company. We talk about their culture, what they want to be, and what they want their customers to see them as.

Once we establish that, we build the tools to help them accomplish it from websites to business cards, employee uniforms to wall art.

In what seems like a short time, we build a new and exciting experience they can share with their customers and potential customers.

For the past two years, this is what we have been doing with the Motorcoach Marketing Council, not for their organization, but for the entire motorcoach industry.

We have been reframing motorcoach travel to help show the world what we truly have to offer. Safe, green, affordable, efficient, group transportation solutions that fit the needs of whatever it is your company wants to promote.

We have helped build a message that the industry can be proud of and that will help shape the future of the industry.

But, with every branding campaign, there is a hidden side that can sabotage even the best attempts to rebrand any product or service.

With my travel to various industry events last year, I had the opportunity to see many places in our beautiful nation. At one event, I was excited that my travel was going to include a long transfer from the airport to the venue.

Anticipating coach ride

After a long flight, I knew it would be a fun opportunity to compare and contrast the two methods of travel. Since I stopped driving a motorcoach professionally, the opportunities to ride on a coach for any duration have been few and far between.

My flight went as expected. I arrived hungry and confused as to why anyone would go through the trouble of passing out a package with four peanuts in it, and stiff from being crammed into a seat that was obviously designed for someone with a dramatically different stature than mine.

The directions I had received from my assistant were clear, and I was able to make it to the coach pickup point without any issues. Although the departures were hourly, my timing was impeccable as I was there only a few minutes before a coach pulled to the curb. It was a nice coach, and I was excited immediately to see the Wi-Fi onboard sticker by the door. I thought of all the work I could accomplish via emails and calls during the ride.

I was truly excited. Then, it all went sideways.

The door opened and the driver stepped off the coach.

His first words to the waiting passengers were "Step back give me some room." His gruff tone was an indication of what was to come.

He seemed older than he probably was. He slowly made his way back to the luggage bays and opened them. Then he barked at the confused crowd to "make a line over here," pointing at a spot of discarded gum on the sidewalk. Obediently, we all neatly formed a line.

"Where are you going?" he asked the first passenger in line. The man answered, the driver grabbed his luggage and moved it towards the middle bay. He grimaced and groaned as he picked up the bag and slid it into the bay.

The noises he made caused the entire line to shoot concerned glances at one another. He returned to the line and called out to the next person, "Where are you going?" Again he was answered, and he slid the bags into a different bay.

I was next. "Where are you going?" I answered that I was there to attend a motorcoach conference and that . . .

Cutting me off in mid-sentence, he growled again, "Where are you going?" only louder this time. I was taken aback, I looked at him confused. He then rattled off four destinations and asked me which one I was going to. None of them sounded familiar.

I told him I was not sure, but the conference coordinator had given me this transportation information. He then said, "I don't know where you are going," and pushed my bag out of line and stepped around me to query the next passenger. I panicked, frantically trying to figure out which of the four stops I was supposed to say. I checked my phone, my hotel reservation, nothing seemed to help.

No ride for you

By this time the line was gone, and he was beginning to close the doors to the luggage bays. He had every intention of leaving me on the curb for the next bus. I then blurted out "I will go to the last stop," hoping the hours on the coach would give me time to figure out where I really wanted to go.

He responded, "Are you sure because these bags are going to that location, and you wont be able to get them if you want to get off earlier." I looked at him dumbfounded. I told him that what I really wanted was to go to my hotel and told him where it was. He then said, "Oh, OK that is the third drop-off, why didn't you just say that?" and proceeded to shove my bag into the middle bay.

I got on the coach and shuffled to the back, hoping to put that experience behind me. Onboard, the driver made his obligatory announcements. At first they were standard but then he said something I could not believe. "Please do not make any phone calls unless they are emergencies. It is rude to me and your fellow passengers."

I watched as the other passengers, who were already on the phone end their conversations, and slide their phones into their bags.

The coach pulled away. For the next few hours, we all rode in near silence. The ride was great. The seat was infinitely more comfortable than the one on the airplane. Unfortunately, there was an air of confusion and discomfort on the coach. People were casting glances at one another about this strange experience.

Stop by stop, people got on and people got off. Every time, we were reminded of our responsibility to not use our phones unless it was a dire emergency, and that if we were going to use a computer or tablet we should do so with respect to our fellow passengers. It felt remarkably like being scolded by an overbearing middle school bus driver.

Finally, my stop arrived, and I proceed to get off the bus. As I came down the stairs, the driver stood at the bottom. His face was as stoic and cold as it had been all afternoon. He was holding a sign that said "tips cheerfully accepted."

So, what is the moral of this story and why is it in a marketing column?

Marketing goes far beyond brochures and websites. It goes further than the uniforms the drivers wear or even the age of the coach. Vision of the future

Marketing is about crafting a perception about your business or in the case of the motorcoach council, the entire motorcoach industry. But how that promise is delivered is as much, or more, marketing as anything we can do.

That day, on that coach, I was excited to see that the very demographics that we, as marketing people for bus operators, want to talk about were present and accounted for. They chose to GoMotorcoach.

Kids, college students, retirees, professionals -- all together on a coach. Yes, that coach took cars off the road. Yes, that coach safely delivered us from point A to point B and yes, that coach was comfortable.

It had power outlets and Wi-Fi onboard. But, in that coach were 35 people who had an experience they would not want to repeat. They will not think of chartering a coach when they are planning their wedding or family reunion.

They wont want to gather a group of their friends and do a pub-crawl or book a coach for a three-day wine tour.

Marketing is about crafting an experience and then delivering on that promise. The future of the motorcoach industry is in our hands. If we want to grow, if we want to flourish, if we want more and more people to choose motorcoach travel over other forms of transportation, then we, as an industry, need to drive that into reality.

Every driver, every sales person, every bus washer needs to understand the role they play in creating this reality. They need to understand how they fit into the big picture of moving this message forward.

Every day millions of people step aboard motorcoaches all over North America. Each of these interactions are opportunities to establish your company and this industry as an exciting option. I challenge each of you to look at your business and see what message you are delivering, day-in and day-out.

I challenge managers and owners to engage your entire staff in the vision of a future where more people are using motorcoaches every day and to help those employees better understand where they fit in that vision.

The fact is, marketing never stops. It is time for all of us to realize we are not in the transportation business, we are in the experience business. When we do, when we make that paradigm shift, we will see that our consumers will respond like we never thought possible.

For more information about the Motorcoach Marketing Council and its programs, go to www.motorcoachmarketing.org.